"It was quite dark by that time, my lady," he said diffidently.
"And you correctly remembered your orders to keep track of Kyrtian, not his slaves." She nodded. "Did you make any effort to see what was within the cave itself?"
He shook his head. "Lord Kyrtian had mage-lights all through the place, but it is very large, and a hard climb down. The floor is littered with debris, but I could not tell you what it was at that distance. The usual trash one finds in a cave, I sup¬pose."
So he had come straight back here; that showed a fine bal¬ance between obedience and good sense. She smiled at him, and thought that his nervousness ebbed, a little. "You've done well; I would rather that you came back here to tell me what happened than waste time in trying to discover the whereabouts of a lot of men who will probably do nothing until their master returns." She laughed, then, and her man relaxed a little further. "As I have said before, what Kyrtian can do, I can do. I have no need of you men inside that cave; I have no intention of con¬fronting Lord Kyrtian, I only wish to discover what he is up to. I can do that being careful and using my own powers of illusion to cloak my presence once one of you has helped me climb down. You, meanwhile, have managed to outflank Aelmarkin and get us here only a little behind Lord Kyrtian's men. I be¬lieve you deserve a bit of a holiday."
Now the slave unbent entirely. "Thank you, my lady," was all he said, but she saw the expression in his eyes change to one of wary gratitude, rather like a somber, alert coursing-hound of¬fered an unexpected treat. She offered him a cup of her wine; he accepted it with a profound bow and drank it off at a gulp. A
pity; it was a good vintage, but likely he wouldn't know good from bad. Perhaps she would educate him.
"I will go into the cave tomorrow to follow Kyrtian. Before I do, I would like you to find a good, out-of-the-way place to camp that is unlikely to be stumbled across by Aelmarkin's men. I'll cloak it with illusion and you all can disport yourselves as you will until I return." His eyes absolutely lit, and she laughed. "And yes, this means you may help yourselves to any of the provisions, the wine included. I don't expect to have to spend much time in that hole, and when I return, our business will be to make all speed back. Too many provisions will only slow us down."
She would take the precaution of changing the wine so that it made anyone who drank it tranquil rather than rowdy. She could always change it back when she returned. Better that they laze a little while she was gone; it would ruin her plans entirely for Aelmarkin's people to discover hers because they were carousing and singing or fighting behind her cloak of il¬lusion.
If something else came across them and they were incapaci¬tated, well—there were other ways she could get home. If they didn't take the precaution of setting a sober sentry, they weren't worth the money she'd paid for them.
"Have another cup," she said, with a dazzling smile, refilling his goblet. "Then go and tell the others what I just told you. I'll want climbing gear ready for me first thing when I wake; you can see me safely down, then return here to the others to wait for my return."
A few hours past dawn, Aelmarkin stood looking up at a vast pile of tumbled rocks; the trail apparently ended there, accord¬ing to his forester. As usual, the skies dripped. He shook rain out of his eyes with irritation; was there never a break from the wretched stuff here?
And Kyrtian, Ancestors curse him, had found a way out of the wretched stuff. "A cave?" Aelmarkin said incredulously. "There's a cave up there? And Kyrtian crawled in there?"
"Yes, my Lord," the forester said into the ground at Ael-
markin's feet. "It is a very, very large cave; the opening is near to the top of it. I could not tell how many of his men went in with him, but the main trail ends here, and I can clearly see where a number of people went up that slope and entered into a gap at the top. Without light I cannot see what is inside, but if they were still immediately inside it, I must suppose they'd have lights of their own, so I presume they've gone in deeper."
"By the Ancestors." Aelmarkin began to chuckle. "Well, it's pretty clear that, whatever is here, it's not Wizards. Unless this is some forgotten entrance into their lair."
"Forgotten, my lord, or no longer in use because of the rock-fall," the scout said, head still bent. "But I dropped a torch within, when I could see no signs of Lord Kyrtian or his men down below, and before it guttered out all I saw was litter. It ap¬pears that if this place was ever in use as an entrance, it has not been used so for a very long time."
"That's good enough for me!" Aelmarkin replied. He con¬sidered the situation. "I'll take you with me; the rest can camp here. We'll see if we can't discover what Kyrtian thinks he's up to."
"It will be very difficult to conceal ourselves in a cave, my lord," the man began.
Aelmarkin cut him off with a gesture; the water from Ael-markin's sodden sleeve spattered him from head to toe, and Aelmarkin felt a bit of sour pleasure as the slave winced. "Not for a mage, you fool! Get whatever gear we'll need—we're al¬ready hours behind him." He looked around at the rest of his slaves. "And you! Put up a proper camp this time! When I get back, I expect to see something other than a half-pitched tent and a fire that won't start! And get moving!"
He put a sting of warning in his voice to remind them of the sting of his punishments, punishments that he had inflicted fre¬quently through their collars each time they bumbled a task. It got them going, although sluggishly.
Well, no matter. In a few moments, he was going to be inside a dry cave. If they couldn't manage to put a camp together
properly by the time he got back, on the way home he'd start crippling them and leaving them behind on the trail to attract the horrors that seemed to stalk these forests. That would give his dear cousin something to have to deal with on his way back to civilization. At the least, Kyrtian would be delayed in return¬ing to his patron, Lord Kyndreth.
And at the most—Aelmarkin would no longer have anything standing between himself and everything he wanted.
This must be that fabled Portal to Evelon, with all of the things that had been left behind scattered about. The Wizards, if they existed at all, certainly weren't here. Opportunity waited and Fate smiled on Aelmarkin at last. And depending on what he found in that cave—well, by the time he returned home, Aelmarkin might even be able to give Lord Kyndreth himself a little healthy competition for ascendancy on the Great Council.
32
Triana looked up at the dim, uneven oval of grey light that marked the opening to the outer world, and absently kicked something dry and crackling from beneath her feet. There was no sign of her slave, but she hadn't expected him to linger once she was safely down. She wondered if she had surprised her forester by getting down into the cave rather handily with nothing more in the way of help than one of the ropes that Kyrtian's people had left behind; she certainly sur¬prised herself.
Then again, it was very interesting what sorts of things one could do with magic when one was terrified out of one's wits. It had been a very long way down to the floor of the cave from that tiny entrance above; fortunately Kyrtian's own people had
left all their ropes behind, ready to climb out when they re¬turned, so at least she had had the comfort of knowing her life¬line was tested and tried.
Ah, but Kyrtian had never been taught the subtle art of Elven female magic, and if he came back he'd have the benefit of her passage. She'd had no notion she could make a rope stronger— or herself briefly stronger as well. By the time her feet touched the floor of the cave, she had imparted the transitory strength of one of her foresters to her arms and legs—and she could have used the rope she dangled from to lower a horse and wagon without worrying about it snapping.
So at a guess, she ought to be able to get herself back up the tumble of rock without mishap and no assistance; it was admit¬tedly easier to climb when one had magic to help.
It was tempting to think about blasting her way out with levin-bolts, though; she'd been practicing for years now in se¬cret and she was getting quite proficient. It would mean less exertion. However, there were drawbacks as well—in the glimpses she'd gotten of the ceiling, she wasn't altogether sure of how stable it was, and it wouldn't do her a great deal of good to bring the ceiling down on herself instead of blasting her way out.
Not subtle, my dear. Not your style.
Besides, unless Kyrtian came to grief in there, she didn't in¬tend to leave any trace of her own passing, so she would proba¬bly have to get out the hard way.
Meanwhile, in the gleam of her mage-light, the only sign that Kyrtian had been here was a dead campfire and a cleared circle among the rubbish littering the floor. He must have gone off long before she even woke, and had gotten a good deal ahead of her. So if she was to discover what he was up to, she had better get moving.
She paused long enough to recover her breath and her power—she'd been hot and sweaty as well, but in the cold, dank cave-air she'd cooled down quickly and was glad of the cloak she'd brought with her, tied in a bundle about her waist.
Now for a little magic. She smiled to herself as she wove
power around her; this was subtle, and not something a mere male would ever appreciate. The illusion she cast upon herself was a rather clever one; it wasn't precisely invisibility, since that wasn't strictly possible. Instead, she cloaked herself in the image of what was behind her, so that anyone looking at her would see only what her body ordinarily would have ob¬scured—a kind of reflection, but not exactly. The illusion wasn't perfect; it couldn't be. Anyone looking closely might well see a faint outline of her body, or notice her shadow on the floor. That was why she wore a light cloak that covered her from head to toe, for a bulky irregular outline against the rough rock of the cave was less likely to be noticed than one with arms, legs, and a head.
She had a rather clever device with her as well, a cone of mirror-finished metal with a handle at its point. She brought her mage-light down and coaxed it into the cone. Now she could di¬rect all of the light where she chose without half-blinding her¬self, or setting the stupid thing to hover above her head. She cast the beam of light reflected out of the cone around herself, and used it to pick a path across the debris to an opening at the rear of this enormous cavern.
She began to wish that the light wasn't showing her way quite so clearly. As the light picked out this or that object amidst the sticks and leaves and trash, she'd have had to have been blind not to spot the bits of armor—and the bones.
Bones which were not all the bones of animals, nor of human slaves, even if the armor could have been mistaken for anything but elven-made.
Her skin crawled as the empty eye-sockets of an elven skull glared at her on the edge of her circle of light. She had already known that something terrible had happened here, but it was one thing to know that intellectually, and quite another to be confronted with the evidence of utter disaster.
A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of this place settled over her, and she resisted the urge to flee back up that rope into the open'. Whatever had happened here had occurred a very long time ago, even by the standards of the
Elvenlords, and nothing, not even ghosts, could linger for that long. But she fancied she caught a whiff of ancient death, of bone-dust and terror, and she couldn't keep her imagination from painting scenes that were not at all com¬fortable.
Nevertheless, as she picked her way across the floor, she avoided looking too closely at anything large enough and white enough to be bone.
Were there whispers, out there in the dark? Was that a move¬ment, not in the shadow, but of the shadow? She told herself resolutely that she wasn't afraid, that only stupid slaves be¬lieved in spirits, but—
There were sounds out there in the darkness, sounds that could be echoes, but could be something else as well. She couldn't even imagine what could have killed so many Elves, so quickly—and the slaves said that the spirits of those who died violently lingered, hungering after the life they'd lost and eager to avenge their deaths on anything living.
She found herself starting at every unexpected sound, and longed for the moment when she reached the far wall and the entrance deeper into the caves.
She had assumed that once she got to the entrance into the next cave she would find her path clear. In fact, she found noth¬ing of the kind.
What had been litter on the floor of the cave was a tangled blockage here; someone, Kyrtian and his people, she assumed, had cleared a pathway through, but if the artifacts there had not already been ready to fall apart at a touch, it couldn't have been done in less than a week. Here the carts of the refugees had jammed at the entrance, and there were many, many more bones, enough so that it was no longer in her imagination that they imparted their own dry hint of ancestral corruption to the air. Big bones, these, the bones of dray-animals long since for¬gotten, for they had perished along with their masters, tangled in the shafts of disintegrating carts in attitudes that suggested a tide of unreasoning panic had washed over them and sent them scattering before it.
And more elven bones, this time ones without armor. Women? Old men?
A disintegrating wagon that had been laden with small, slen¬der creatures—it took her a moment to get past the disbelief to understand that this had been a wagon full of children.
It was hard to imagine. One seldom saw elven children; they were usually kept in nurseries until they were considered old enough to mingle with the rest of society. She could hardly imagine so many in one place. What sort of spirit would a child leave behind? Something wispy and melancholy—or feral and vicious?